


Son of the Most Low: The Eagle

by Gisette (Calesvol)



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker, Historical RPF, Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Action/Adventure, Blood and Gore, Dehumanization, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Government Conspiracy, Multi, Mutilation, Original Fiction, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Political Campaigns, Unethical Experimentation, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-16 17:59:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16500089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calesvol/pseuds/Gisette
Summary: Count Dracula didn't die when he was supposed to. Based on an original canon with foundations in Bram Stoker's source material and expanding across history, Vlad's journey spans the reaches of time itself, watching him devolve from a feared warlord, godlike sorcerer, to a dehumanized weapon of war watching the world march past in mortar fire and all the horrors of the modern war.Part 1 deals with Dracula's fall after the events of the book and continues up until World War I.





	1. Chapter 1

Warning(s): M, torture, mutilation

* * *

The journals would end there, they decided. It was terrible work that needed to be done, but who else but they were capable of it? Beneath the bowels of Castle Dracula, in the subterranean levels where one steered into a chasm of a chapel, and the other, the ugly roosting where the Count had made his dusty and soiled home, ensconced torches flickering and dancing and made a musty sort of disquiet; their flare an old, dusty sound. Like pages of a aged book being carded through. The trickle of groundwater echoed resoundingly, with a grim sort of clarity that would drive a sane man absolutely mad.

At a tiered rise before the final descent, Jack Seward cast his nervous blue eyes gingerly down the winding corridor where a hellish, cultish and flaming gut seemed to invite them into hell itself. The doctor was perched upon a rotted wine casket, staring mutedly at his heavily soiled, dirty hands. “It’s been over a week, John. Has Van Helsing even rested? I worry. I worry this has all been in vain,” the Englishman’s voice prattled anxiously despite the bravery they’d shown days before.

No, Johnathan Harker thought, the days had not passed kindly at all. “He’s doing what must be done. Think of Mina, and Arthur. Think of Quincey.” He still remembered the Texan’s death before the craning rays of dawn as though barely awake pierced through the unholy vale of blizzards and clouds. His eyes felt puffy, and there was a ribbing sensation to nudge the bags with his finger, to grope the tender baggage and feel its burn.

Except, his hands were so caulked in blood and dust that he feared contaminating them. Especially with blood that was not his.

“I almost envy them, John. They are to compile our horrors and pass them as fiction. Is what we’re doing fiction? Is what’s down there, _fiction_?” Seward demanded hoarsely before modulating his voice back into a whisper out of shame. His hands covered his face and his shoulders sagged with exhaustion, with the pain of losing Quincey and Lucy and everything normal in the world. Even his institution felt like a quiet grave compared to this hell.

“Jack, you know the Professor is doing all he can. Perhaps more than the rest of us combined, except—maybe for Mina. God above, yes—Mina!” Johnathan hung on to her name like hope, that a spare few train rides across Europe and passage by ship would get him home, that he could begin anew as a solicitor in charge of Mr. Hawkings’ agency, that they might rebuild their lives.

That, perhaps, even Mina could renew her occupation as an etiquette schoolmistress for girls if it suited her. Something robust and simple, so that they might leave this all behind them. Except, the present dug into their backs as rudely jagged stone, the torches fumigating loudly and oppressively, contentiously leeching oxygen.

Jack sighed miserably. “…I’m sorry, John. She suffered the worst of us. And did so much for us. I shouldn’t speak ill of her. I’m sorry.” His head hung and fingers dug into his scalp, in his untamed mess of dark curls and bleak shades of a beard populating his face. They’d been too exhausted, too spent to think of caring about basic hygiene. The poor went weeks and months without, so could they. Baths couldn’t be afforded when every other second promised a grim crisis.

“Friend John, friend Jack, come!”

At first, in their states of sleep deprivation, they questioned if they’d heard the professor’s sharp, flinty bark or if it had been divine providence borrowing his voice to scold them. They wondered a moment too long before Abraham repeated it, jumping from their repose like schoolboys caught dozing during a lecture and narrowly barreling down the ancient, crumbling passageway all grim and hot before they balked in the chapel proper.

It was like stepping into the chamber of a heart and pulsed just as loudly. The air was thick and hot, acrid beneath the intense glare of the torches lit. The ripe stench of perspiring men steamed likely from Van Helsing, but this was not the most bewildering sight.

Prone upon the floor was a man who could’ve passed for an Oxford schoolfellow, young enough in appearance, a pale face with an angular, defined jaw and high cheekbones and compelling, burdened emerald eyes affixed blankly to the ceiling. Baggage weighed beneath and his skin was absolutely filthy and encrusted with mud and dried blood, wounds and liaisons torn upon olive flesh while black hair fanned mottled about him. A visage handsome enough that God would see fit to cast him from heaven alongside Lucifer.

“Professor Van Helsing, are you certain this is him?” John inquired softly, the Dutchman barking a harsh and humorless laugh that spooked the other from his observation.

“Friend John, gaze into its eyes and tell me this is not Miss Lucy and Friend Quincey’s killer, and Madam Mina’s tormentor,” Abraham answered severely, dryly, causing even Jack quail.

“Professor,” Jack greeted softly, cautiously, “what is keeping him so…docile? Why aren’t we being attacked?” He stared incredulously at the vampire that only blinked dully to the ceiling, almost catatonic—though, Seward was abundantly aware that the Count was not felled so easily. His eyes switched uneasily between Abraham and back again.

Imperiously did Abraham straighten his spine, towering over Dracula like the arm of a sundial, a holy and noble shade. “Understand this, my friends: our wait was not capricious. It was not for cruelty or vainglory that we wait, that you are taxed beyond all doubt. For we had but wait for our final labor. By Pope Leo XIII’s allowance, we have arrested this devilish evil to await punishment from the most high by the Nails of Christ!”

John’s eyes traced over the scrap cloth draped over the creature’s loins for modesty, to his feet. There, one overlapping the other, was a rusted barb protruding flatly from it with coagulated blood and rust mingling sickly together. Then, to the wrists above his head that bore something quite similar and just as infested in appearance. By the wiles of grim curiosity did Johnathan nudge the toes with his foot, religious fear keeping him from so much as keeping his eyes upon the nails of Christ. The holiness stifled the omnipresent decay and gloom of the castle but alleviated little else. This was not a comforting sensation. It was cutting and bore a mission no man could hope to match.

Dracula’s mouth opened in a silent, guttural scream and snarl, limbs tensing as though galvanized by an electric prod, but they did their work. Though there was a pang of empathy for the creature, though the vision of the monster holding his wife’s pale face to the creature’s marble white chest made him sick with indignation, of a hatred so blasphemous he had to calm himself. “What would you have us do?” John asked with a grim resolution, flicking his sharpened grey eyes to the professor’s unsmiling face.

“We must bind him, friend John,” the Dutchman said softly, as though they whispered through a library. “It is an act you must do. Only you.”

Seward gaped haplessly at his mentor, skirting around the vampire with supplication coloring his movements. “Professor, you don’t mean—” But when what he wished to say was answered with a grim, silent retort did the doctor shy away and gape at the creature. “This—in your correspondence with Rome, this is what they wanted…?”

“Yes.” It was short, officious, shunted by a sage realization that dawned upon only wise men. “By Catholic Rites since the time of King Solomon, we will bind this creature. This son of the devil, that is his name. It is only what is antithetical to his element that we will dream of another day. For what we bind is a threat upon Western civilization, friend Jack. A threat upon the whole of Christendom that it is by moral obligation we must so act.”

Though Jack’s lips pursed uncertainly, he nodded his head in quick, heartened succession. “Alright, alright,” he conceded shakily to himself, taking a kerchief from his lapel pocket and dabbing his shining, flushed forehead with it. “What must we do?”

Abraham smiled kindly, but his gaze was still heavy with their dark purpose. “Come here,” he instructed, gesturing first to John and then to Jack, huddling together like carolers in a winter blizzard. To Jack, he passed a Bible heavily tabbed, worn and leather bound. “The red ones, friend Jack. You must read those passages specifically, as I have marked them in the margins. Can you do it?” Jack nodded severely, Abraham patting his shoulder and turning then to John. “Friend John, with this signet ring you must draw this as though you would in sand, the signet upon the beast’s chest. Can you do this?” To John he passed an old brass signet ring with a strange rune on its face, deceptively simple and modest. With it, a piece of cloth upon which a Solomonic circle was inscribed.

Would damnation face him for this? Still, thinking of Mina and their future he accepted it without hesitance. “What will you do, professor?”

Abraham smiled mirthlessly, piercing pale eyes upon the creature who still stared haplessly ahead. “I must bind it with a chant you cannot hear or understand. Ancient Gregorian notes and words that will keep it subdued, for this evil can contest even against the will of Christ and God-fearing men.”

Understanding what must be done, upon a small stool did Abraham squat while Johnathan sank to his knees, forefinger curling through the ring and wielding upside-down so he might make these terrible inscriptions. Jack took the side parallel John and hastily began flipping to the appointed page, scanning it with a shaking finger to find exactly where he would begin, jumping between passages exactly as Abraham had marked them.

“My friends, remember: do not stop, no matter what terrors the creature will summon. We cannot let evil its time in sweet sunshine.”

They waited as Abraham suddenly grew intensely quiet, head hung and tucked to his collar while they heard the rising groan of chanting barely below a whisper. The ground began quaking with an evil power as the Count’s eyes dyed a sick, virulent red and his body began twitching and writhing in places. Like a crop whipped to their sides did Jack begin the Godly ritual with a voice pitched too high that found a steadier tone after a few words despite the quaking earth, John tremulously following the cloth-piece and the numbers marked on the different strokes and symbols, heart racing in his throat.

The torches began wavering and snapping in an unseen wind, the furious braying of the gales snaking through those corridors as if devils themselves had been unleashed upon the hapless band. Abraham moved to clutch at the sides of Dracula’s face, the vampire snarling while a perspiring Johnathan worked quickly yet gingerly upon the marks, straining hard to watch it with careful precision as the skin opened and wept black blood, skin burning at the contact that made John’s eyes water.

Both men thought of their loves. Mina. Lucy. And it impelled them harder, flogging a righteous anger in them both.

Jack’s orating grew to an uncharacteristic and frantic volume, stronger than he’d heard before. He preached as though to unwashed masses, as a zealot would to his congregation that barred themselves inside while hellfire tore through their communities and his chanting was the only thing keeping the flames abated. Dracula’s flesh tore at the Nails, but even he couldn’t rip his flesh free.

Abraham could appear dead were it not for the rapacity of his lips’ movement, muttering becoming an unintelligible drone neither man bothered to comprehend. Like instinct did they work through minutes that felt like hours, through the convulsing earth and whipping torches and hellion winds that bit and tore at their efforts, threatening to rend them apart. It was the Count’s black magic, Abraham knew; that which had been gained from the Scholomance.

As a near hour it felt passed them by, Jack’s throat cracked with dryness and Abraham trembled from exertion, John’s eyes burning so hotly it felt as though someone had replaced his with hot coals.

This was holy work. Abraham said. The devil cannot have his due.

It was a surreal, final moment of finality when Johnathan completed the final stroke, the wake of it singed bright and smoldering like agitated coals beneath a hearth fire. An unseen force compelled him back, arrested him and the other two to the wall as Dracula’s body pitched upwards and the vampire unleashed a sorrowing, hellish wail that sounded like a chorus of banshees until the winds slowed and ceased, the earth gave a final shudder before stilling, and the torchlight whipped once and settled jarringly.

John, whose hands had flown upon his face to shield himself, leaned heavily on the wall and gradually lowered his arms. The virulent hellfire had ceased and an empty silence swam through the gaps, unnerving him. Strands of black plastered to Dracula’s face, the immortal’s body heavily scarred and bruised through the ordeal. Jack was similarly stunned, but his gaze flickered to Abraham when the man recovered himself in short order and lifted Dracula by the shoulder, forcing him on his side a little.

There, the brand emblazoned on his back, too, despite Johnathan never having touched that expanse of flesh. Quickly, Abraham righted himself with an almost inhuman alacrity and bent over the vampire, studying the pentagram John had made. The scarification revealed a vulnerable layer of epidermis beneath, the breadth of the signet’s head that had flayed the flesh that burned away.

“Johnathan, the ring,” Abraham beckoned softly with an open palm, eyes transfixed upon the creature. Fumbling, John passed it on, glad to be rid of it. Opposite did he wordlessly gesture to Jack for the Bible, the doctor handing it over compliantly, the pair of them winded while Abraham appeared nonplussed. He inhaled deeply as it slipped on his ring finger, the smoldering skin hardened suddenly into scabs the instant it did. Then, those too burnt away into rivulets of smoke.

Decorously did Abraham leaf through another section entirely where the tabs were white. “Heed me, foul creature. Heed me!” his voice boomed, Dracula’s eyes snapping upon the professor. He smiled darkly. “Yes, heed me, you monster… By the power of God granted unto me, his lowly servant, you are sealed. Your powers, stolen! By the will of man shall you crawl on your belly like the serpent and you shall listen to he whom wears this! And, I command you! You are reduced to a mortal, wretch! You are weak as a man, mortal as a man, and you shall serve man ‘til the end of your days! This, I bind you!”

A wretched keening issued from the vampire as pain rocked him, the dangerous clout of unholy energy ebbing away into an ordinary mustiness, the staleness of perspiration and the pungency of the earth. A gusto of silence whisked away the enormity of their task, Abraham shuffling away from the immortal while Jack skittishly backpedaled like a frightened deer. Tiredness took over where righteous had reigned so heavily on Van Helsing’s face, the man swiping away notes of sweat with the cuff of his filthy sleeve. They all were worn and bedraggled, easily.

“Professor—” Jack ventured, only to be met with a guilt-inducing exhaustion of an old man too close to retirement. It had taken a herculean effort for him, and for it, John was endlessly grateful. They all were, still— “Might I ask where we will proceed from here? What are we to do with him?” The doctor’s gaze quivered anxiously towards the vampire that had since become utterly prone, a mortality about him.

Abraham set his jaw, meeting Seward’s gaze sharply. “There is a gate, friend Jack. One that will lock the Count within this chapel and arrest him here. We shall rest, us three. We shall bathe and sup and record everything that has transpired, in journals, and I shall send it with a letter to Rome, personally. You two shall remain and guard this place from his loyal Roma who will no doubt attempt to free him, though His Majesty King Carol I of this country has agreed to help guard Castle Dracula until he is moved from the country.”

“Moved from the country…?” John echoed dubiously, brows knit with concern. He looked ready to object but was stopped.

“Friend John, do not worry what becomes of him. For after this day, after you clean and sup and rest, you will pen your journal of what occurred and this shall be no more than a memory, I promise you. To England, to your wife and home! They await!” Abraham crowed as he ascended the stairs, his laughter pealing deliriously.

Jack and John exchanged confused looks, but followed suit, locking the high, barred egress soundly and ensuring their prisoner remained in his cell.

Whatever would come of it, he prayed he would never have to see this monster ever again.

* * *

The room which he’d stayed felt like a crawling tomb, but it was familiar. Small, with four walls which he could see and the enormous, gaping window that yawned over the Carpathians and the sheer drop into the valley below of Transylvania was a stunning view, especially with a hopeful sunrise peeking over the snowcapped mountains, strokes of cool blues cascading away in their lees and the jagged imprints of craggy violet stone peeking from beneath. Forests straddled the spurs and ascended, but in a wintery world, they appeared a thicker white mantle than a mere shroud he’d remembered months ago, in the spring, climbing over the shoulders between mountains.

He wanted to be done with it, with this place. He wanted his foggy, smoggy London so much it made him ache.

Mechanically did John prepare a bath in the washroom nearby, doing only the slim necessity, nape prickling with the anticipation of one of Dracula’s brides with her enticing mannerisms making him think impure things. But, they were dead, Van Helsing had said. He’d staked them himself. Then why did it feel as though their shadows hung as heavily as their maker’s? Even in death?

Forcing the thoughts from his mind, John toweled himself dry after bathing, watching the murky, muddy water sluice down the drain with a hollow, metallic thirstiness. He was clean bodily, he thought. While shaving, he tugged at the premature grey strands in his hair, the salt and pepper of the stubble he sheered away. Gripping the sides of the wash bin, a shuddery breath exhaled. One more day. Just one more day and he could embrace his sweet, lovely Mina.

That alone was enough to invigorate him to delay sleeping, fetching his fountain pen and ink from his trundle, hastily unscrewing and replacing its cartridge with ink, and open the journal he’d left off at and dating it at the desk overlooking the stunning view.

For the next few hours, he ignored them all.

He wrote as though God Himself had possessed him, the furious scratch of his nib to paper filling the silence for pages upon pages, words springing from his hand as it became a therapeutic, mindless task. Such an easy chore compared to the horror of hours before, dozens of pages filled as he wrote with the speed of one possessed.

It slowed when it came after recalling when they’d left the chapel, the cell where Dracula was kept. No one read for the bathing, the supping, the sleeping, or the loving wish of a husband to return home to his wife. To a normal life that was just within reach.

His hand ached when he finally set his pen down with finality, graceless and loud. But as the final page dried, that faint glossy black sheen flattening into a dull sable, he felt like his work was done.

The horror was almost over.

Thoughtlessly, without even drawing the sheets over himself, he collapsed into the musty mattress and submitted to a long, dreamless sleep.

* * *

“Rise, Vlad.”

Vlad’s eyes snapped open unwillingly and automatically did his limbs prop beneath him, finding the Nails of Christ gone despite the inferno of pain. He wanted to scream in agony, in grief. For himself, for his lost brides—for the children that had fled that he did not know the condition of. Hands trembled intensely, and he was barely able to stand. The sheet covering his groin fell immodestly, but he wasn’t commanded to fetch it again.

No, monsters had no such rights.

The Dracul’s head hung servilely as Abraham strode languidly forth, the Seal of Solomon worn triumphantly on his ring finger like a gloating prize. As if God Himself had conspired against him. The Solomonic seal embossed upon it glowed hotly as it made him obey, in time with the one cauterized upon his chest. Abraham regarded him coolly, those glacial blue eyes boring into him like daggers. His lids hung heavily and brows rose in a perpetual state of unimpressed disdain. Like a patronizing parent.

Vlad would’ve liked to rend him limb from limb if he could.

Abraham stepped back, whistled quick and thin through his teeth before the shuffle of footsteps could be heard. Faint oaths in German at the crumbling decay of the underground stair sounded, vitriolic. Saxon men. Men likely in retinue of that damned German king who dared besmirch his country as his kingdom. They trudged down the stairs, and he was right. Carol I’s standard hung on their decorated jackets, on decorated breasts. Between them, a man-sized crate was set resoundingly on the ground.

Abraham smiled a smile of faint sadism. He could see it. “Thank you, gentlemen, that will be all,” Abraham dismissed airily, eyes never detached from the vampire. He nodded to the threadbare peasant’s tunic and trousers, the implication clear. “Change.” Vlad did, albeit slowly. His flesh crawled and burned and he wanted to tear off his skin while he moved against his raging will. At least there was a semblance of modesty.

How Vlad’s throat burned for blood!

“What will happen now, _domnul_?” He wanted to spit for this forced submission, to bloody them all and dismember them slowly, with the cruelest relish. Machinations turned the air in cogs, Van Helsing turning the lever that cranked the gears. While his anger crackled in his veins impotently.

“Get in the box, Vlad.”

Wordlessly, jaw clamped shut, the vampire bent himself into a fetal position to duck inside the box, limbs creaking but unable to do aught else.

Just as Abraham made to leave the room, he lastly commanded, “Now sleep, Vlad. Do not awaken until I say.”

He wanted to fight it, gods below he did. But the corners of his vision slowly faded away, the slatted cover of the box fitted in place and the dull pounding of hammers on nails lulled him wrongly. Treated like cargo, a perversion of his once original plan.

Then, all faded to darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Warning(s): M, incarceration

* * *

It would be a day and another before they finally exited Romania for good, the country seeming to fall away from Bucharest as the two train stops they’d travail upon passed from Bucharest, Romania to Bern, Switzerland, and finally to Rome itself that was the location of the papacy. The air was different here, Abraham Van Helsing had thought to himself. The sacred Nails of Christ—two of the original three—had been on loan for stringent reasons, secret ones. The prelate Gregorio had made it explicitly clear: there would be no meeting the pope. Not yet.

Not until they could ensure the voracity of the monster.

Beneath high, domed ceilings, pristine Roman colonnades, and veiny white marble floors in a corridor of the Apostolic Palace, a sense of urgency swelled with the box carted through with its tarp. The enormous, Renaissance portraits of past popes stared down guilelessly upon them, noble severity writ on the wrinkles and crags of their aged faces as though they were judging the infernal beast Abraham had brought with him. In truth, he’d been surprised his telegram had been regarded so quickly, but a vampire sired by Lucifer himself was much cause of concern.

It was not a reading room or board room they would meet, but the Courtyard of the Library where the pontiff’s own representative would meet them to authenticate Dracula’s personage and determine where they might proceed. They pope himself, they said, couldn’t be exposed to such a monstrosity and he was inclined to agree. A devout Catholic among his Protestant friends, it was for this reason he represented these personal interests.

“This way, _signore_ ,” a Swiss guard at his front directed, he and two others wheeling the container itself blanketed by a hastily blessed tarp one of the cardinals had been compelled into doing. Like a funeral procession did they all proceed in black, as though they grieved something good. In plainclothes, he knew it was much less likely they would be stopped and questioned by any of the other Vatican members.

Through a looming pair of carved doors did they proceed into the modest courtyard, four high walls ornately carved blockaded against the worst of the cool winds that tore across Vatican City, still much milder in clime than they’d come from in Romania. From aloft, and even among the groomed hedges, Swiss Guard members were stationed at the four corners and at four points on the roof, no doubt should the vampire prove difficult. Abraham himself had informed the papacy of his weaknesses beforehand, something gladly done.

A stout, weathered man of a ruddy complexion flush from the cold gazed at them with small, cold green eyes. This was Father Augustus, a German-Italian priest in service of the Vatican. Secretly, he was an emissary of Leo XIII’s, something of a master of secrets unofficially decorated. That his priesthood was in name only but his service and resources invaluable. Lifting the brim of his fedora some, he nodded towards the concealed box. “ _Herr_ Van Helsing, the creature is inside and properly subdued?” he asked without greeting, which served the professor just fine.

Abraham smiled thinly towards the man, a knowing wryness. “Yes, but of course. Do you wish to see him?” At a firm nod, the Dutchman nodding towards the guards who had been summarily instructed. Carefully, they pulled back the tarp to one of its sides, the acrid scent of a cramped body wafting unpleasantly but soon whisked away by cool Vatican winds. The gloomy sky hung closer as if in anticipation, Abraham certain he felt droplets in the November chill. With a pair of crowbars did they pry the lid off, a wooden creak and groan of protest clinging before it toppled to the ground soundly. Inside, Vlad was curled like a babe, deep within a hibernating sleep. The Seal of Solomon still upon his finger, Abraham brandished it. “Rise, my monster! Rise and stand, still as a sentry!”

Augustus visibly flinched when Vlad’s eyes snapped open like an automaton, moving with all the crookedness of one as the Dracul unfurled himself mechanically and stood before the Father and Swiss guardsmen who trained their bayonets and rifles at him. However, it was unnecessary as Vlad stood, silently. Augustus rounded one of the guards slowly, expression slow and disbelieving. “I—I do not understand. He appears to be no more than an ordinary man. Have you deceived us, Van Helsing?” Augustus demanded as his head jerked towards Abraham, wanting an explanation.

“Vlad, show them your fangs.” As the ring glowed softly, Vlad curled his lips back in a snarl and hissed, an entire mouth of wicked and wolfish serrations bearing at them with a hideous growl. Abraham strove to hide his smugness, disguising it as a reciprocal command to close his mouth upon the priest garnering an ample enough view of it.

“So, it’s true. He truly is the son of the devil,” one of the Swiss men shuddered, crossing himself that his compatriots mirrored.

Augustus flashed them a reproachful look. “And you will not quail before the devil! You are men of God and you fear only the Lord!” the priest barked wrathfully, sighing irately. To Abraham he schooled his features sternly. “And you, Professor Van Helsing, know this: while the whole of Christendom will be forever indebted to the good works you and your fellows have performed upon the world, I do not know if I can approve of what you wished of him. …Men, to the corners. Leave me to discuss this further in private.”

Reluctantly, the blond men flashed each other uncertain looks but ultimately listened and stood sentry several paces away, outside of earshot. Abraham regarded the man enigmatically. “Then do not burden yourself, Father. For I thought that would ultimately lay with the pope himself, this decision.”

The German’s lips pulled back in a grimace. “Tell me, Professor, why do you aspire to bring this creature back with you to Holland? You say it is for medical study, to the benefit of humanity, but is that truly so simple? Here you hold a key that could unlock unprecedented theological secrets! A hellion itself!”

“Yes, this was my intention, however, you find disagreement with it? I believed this would be ruminated by His Holiness himself, you see. And that its fate lay with God’s ambassador upon earth himself.”

Augustus rubbed one of his temples, muttering, “His Holiness has yet to see the missive. We believed you would not have arrived so soon, Herr Van Helsing. You must understand our position should word of Dracula’s existence cut loose? What scandal would erupt? We must keep it secret at all costs.”

Abraham smiled again, still mysterious, still puzzling. “Perhaps we might reach a compromise, Father. What if, instead, we remain here—at the Pontific Academy of the Sciences? Allow me to lead the scientific enquiry and you head the investigative. Pick his brains, if you will. Learn of heaven and hell all while we remain here, within sight. Ah, I imagine I might have to send my resignation to the University of Amsterdam, a shame, a true shame!”

Augustus set his jaw, nodding contemplatively. He clasped his hands behind his back. “Get your creature back in his box and we will find a place in the catacombs for him. And you, professor—you, we’ll find temporary board until this is negotiated.”

“Excellent.” To the despondent Vlad he clapped his hands once and commanded for him to return to his box, instructing, “Vlad, you are to return to your box. Then, you will wait in your cell for further instruction and you will be docile and benign as a lamb, am I clear?”

He could hear it, God above he could. As clear as King Laugh did he hear the fire in Vlad’s throat, the electricity in his veins that wanted nothing less than to tear apart every man in Vatican City walls. From the golden glow of the electric lamps newly made, it shone on his features, this seraphic man buried beneath his mussed black hair. To think, he could’ve easily been the muse of Leonardo or Michelangelo or any of the other Italian greats. But, he complied. Crumpling like a broken thing he fit himself inside his box, filthy from sleep and further filthy still. But, within the day he knew a conclusion would be met.

“Good night, Count. Rest well, until the morn.”

* * *

He was dumped unceremoniously into the promised cell, world a tumble of old scents and dampness and dim, distant echoes of dripping groundwater at intervals. Behind him, an iron barred door swung heavily shut with a rude clangor. Emerald eyes peered up, seeing the narrow room no more expansive than a stall, depleted of bodies with its recessed slots wide and long enough for a dead man to rest all vacant of previous occupiers. Vlad could smell their remains: the bitter, rusted stench of copper, the putrid stench of ammonia and all the dried smoothness of newly calcified and revealed bone.

The dusty stone floors sloped downwards from centuries of being tread upon, the candles hung from braziers providing some minimal lighting, but not much. It cast those iron bars in a gloomy shadow upon his person, uncaring of how he must’ve looked to them. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Ah. Tears. They flowed, thick and red, from tear ducts that once shed water. This was more damnable, wasn’t it?

His Brides. When they had died, he’d felt the twist of agony in his heart. Panna, Denisa, and Natalya. Three women from the Szgany who had voluntarily offered themselves to be his brides, daughters of their most esteemed Roma. It had been a compromise between men, between peoples, that they would live in his lands so long as they might be employed in his castle and reap all the benefits of a secure people. A people loyal to him despite his being.  Only the Slovaks in his employ were nearly as loyal, but not totally as much, still.

Three beautiful women who looked as though they were made from divinity itself, sharing the forests with the English dryads. Beautiful, learned women whom he had loved. He, and his darling friend, Carmilla, who had fled Styria after her former beloved had scorned her, had adored them. They were a family, they all. And by them, made into moroi did they bear his children in a way no human women could’ve. Six children whom were handsome and lovely and so gratefully scattered across the whole of Europe.

They couldn’t know, they couldn’t know!

He had no power, no communication with the infernal, and nothing to hope for except for the future. If hope would still exist by then, for he knew—his spirit was forfeit, and men of God always sought to break the devils under their heel.


	3. Chapter 3

Warning(s): M, none

* * *

 _A stack of paper is so remarkably efficient_ , Abraham thinks, touching a single, errant corner with the prod of his forefinger back into place. Instead, it crushes at his insistence, but he does not worry. No, there are other things to better occupy one’s mind. Better places to.

His quarters were hastily fixed together: a cloistered room, white stucco walls with a crucifix over the bed and ikon of the Holy Virgin on one of the walls, Madonna and Child. A tall, stout wardrobe hung some of his suits within while a bare desk parallel to the bed occupies its own wall, and there are no windows. The electric lamps on the one-drawer nightstand and on the threadbare desk provide dismal, faltering titan light like a sunset but it’s enough to see. Everything made from wood is lacquered a dark chestnut and he can smell hints of pine and resin that stick to his tongue like syrup. It is old, it is not fresh. But, the reason for his being there, aside from the temporary, is obvious: write.

They know of the fate of the original journals Arthur and Mina, and now Jack and Johnathan, were transcribing would be sent to Vatican City and locked within the Vatican Secret Archives along with the nails and recently fetched Seal of Solomon. It would be in Pope Leo XIII’s possession now, it was decided. And it was beneath the Papal Academy of Sciences he would be held, in their vaults for brutal experimentation the other Academicians would be utterly oblivious to.

One day, the world would know. One day, the world would know of another chapter of a battle of a war against evil that God-loving and -fearing children had been victorious over. Abraham amusedly wondered how their dear Mina of the timetables and trains would look painted like a Renaissance angel.

But now was the time not to wonder, for now he must write! For idle hands made the devil’s work, his schoolmistress of a lifetime ago barked. Yet, were his hands at so much risk when his mind was occupied?

Oh, but rest assured, he wrote. They had provided a dozen leather-bound journals to scrawl away in, and he had, for the past day. Easily filling them like you would dainty porcelain cups in an Englishmen’s favorite afternoon teatime. If his thoughts were too silent or his hand too still, Van Helsing could hear the buzz of electricity through the wires. A buzz that reminded him of the energy from the ritual.

The Dutchman was nearly finished, just where they were packing away the vampire into the freight car with the rest of it, but his hands were old and age chased him and caught up, nipping at his heel like Jack Frost. There were Swiss Guards stationed in his hall, for no real reason, he supposed. It was not his person they worried over, but that of his knowledge. He knew the look. Men who could cut him down for the slightest infraction but abstained for as long as those journals made it to where they’d need to be, to be dissected and locked away forever.

Abraham distantly wondered if they’d remain anonymous. Perhaps it was better if they did.

It was maybe no more than a few hours later that he finished, letting the ink dry and set before stacking the bundle with leather thongs and tying them tightly, knowing that with them went his possible insurance. Command of Dracula was no longer in his hands, and with it, any bargaining chips. And why did he relinquish it so easily? Was it because this closed the greatest chapter of his life? Was he ready for some back-alley execution so long as it meant the truth was known and Dracula’s terror ended?

“Excuse me, might you point me in the direction of the one I am supposed to hand this away to?” Abraham inquired of one of the guards, a tall, long-faced blond Swiss, with a grandfatherly, doddering tone and a kind shine in his eyes that was difficult to tell was feigned. He lifted the bound journals hung by their binding, like a parcel of newspapers. “The fellow I spoke to was Father Augustus, however—”

“Wait here,” the guardsman replied coldly, clomping away like a Belgian draft horse, heavy-footed and inelegant. Abraham nodded to himself, glancing over the paintings that illuminated an otherwise Spartan hall. Was this a prison he was in, after all?

Moments later, it wasn’t a priest that answered those summons, but a nun. A sub-Saharan African woman with a complexion like smooth onyx as if she’d walked in from the whipping sands of the lower Nile and not from the changing cloud cover of Vatican City that sculled dully and with an English pallor across the sky. A pretty, angular face with intelligent eyes met his own, over a wide, button nose, and an expressive mouth smiling kindly at him as all young women did towards the grandfatherly, hair likely worn in a bun beneath the veil. “Sister Amani shall relieve your burden,” the guard spoke over her shoulder, looming like a pale, cold death.

Abraham almost had to shudder, had he not faced far, far worse, at the prospect of being relieved of his ‘insurance’. He smiled enigmatically, pointedly at the blond. “Thank you,” he replied before focusing on the nun. By the looks of it, she was part of a Vatican Order if her white and gold-trimmed habit was anything to go by. “Now, are you the one I should hand this burden away to, Sister? I would hate to leave you with such a cumbersome load.”

Amani couldn’t help but smile radiantly. Much, much warmer than that guard, by far! “Yes, Professor.”

Abraham opened his hands and extended one, invitation for the Sister to walk alongside him. “Why do we not travel there together? Easily are journeys made shorter when engaged in conversation.”

A faint pucker appeared on her brow, but nothing more. “Are you sure? It’s no bother, really,” Amani insisted, but part of him knew she might enjoy the company. Vatican City was a terribly lonesome place, more than one might believe. Especially at night. The pomp and ceremony surrounding the Easter Vigil wasn’t the truth behind its opulent face.

“Yes, come, come. If privacy should beckon you, I will depart.” She nodded amenably, and the pair set off. “Now, if you don’t mind my asking, but your name—Amani. Is that short for Amanirenas? It is one I’ve encountered in my studies of the Kushite Kingdom.” Seeing as Sudan was under Egyptian and English control, it came as little surprise to notice.

“Yes, the same,” the sister replied as the pair walked under torchlight, though she appeared troubled, coppery features seeming to withdraw. “I left quite some time ago, sir.”

Abraham nodded in understanding. Their footfalls fell in line with one another’s, the halls soon giving way to immense campos and courtyards between buildings. The Academy of the Sciences could be seen from their position, a modest structure compared to the other papal appointments. Italian cypresses lined the walkways between, shading the pair. “Might I ask which Order you originally come from, Sister?”

“The Society of Alexandria. We’re the scholarly arm of the Alexandrian Patriarchate in Alexandria, in Egypt. But I’m certain you know of this, sir.”

It wouldn’t be much longer, would it? He could the impasse growing thinner like the Fates prepared to cut their String. “You appear troubled, Sister Amani. Please, be frank with me. I am not one who tells the secrets of others.”

It was risky. Heaven above, he knew how it was between peoples. How those of Europe were seen as above the Africas they colonized, barbaric a practice as it was. Knowledge was better shared, not conquered. But, his sincerity seemed to reach the anxious woman. She wrung her hands together, nearly black eyes bored into the marble as they advanced, pace slowing some. “I despise it, sir. My country is not my own, torn apart by wolves while her people are disregarded. We were a kingdom once. Made of kingdoms and an empire. Once, we ruled Egypt. Kingdoms as great as if not greater than that of the West’s.”

Abraham nodded slowly, glancing at the young woman. “Tyranny is not forever. I personally saw the end to one, let us say. Very recently, in fact.” He spoke carefully around it. For though he and his friends masterminded the effort against Dracula, they were on hot and holy ground now. Ground that would sooner slay vanquishers of evil than suffer a defacement to their ego.

She mustered a small smile, even if she was not entirely convinced. Though, there wasn’t time to discuss it further as they came to the Academy of Sciences entrance, Abraham handing off the bundle. It was dark today, even so late at night. Maybe it was the dark nature amassed here, maybe it was the folly of man’s imagination. Even he couldn’t say, but a storm was coming, that much he did.

Like being plunged into Romania’s inescapable winter all over again, a cold was brewing. Wordlessly, Sister Amani inclined her head respectfully, and he emulated it. “Thank you, professor. We have much yet to do, but I certainly hope might meet again.”

“I certainly hope so, as another night in that cell and I might go mad yet. Farewell, dear Sister. I pray your endeavors go well.”

* * *

When Vlad awoke next, the world was blinding to behold. Was this what it was like, being born? Everything being unconscious and dark until you’re thrust into the cold, cloying world with light grabbing you by the ankles and drowning in air instead of the amniotic fluid of the womb, thick and warm and sludgy.  He blinked—once, twice—before the world gained focus.

It was an operating theater. Classic in conception, but modern in appointments. He had heard of these, glancing down past the towel draped over his waist and a body newly cleaned by the lack of dirt he felt clinging to his complexion, and to the sea of at least a dozen eyes seated in the risers. The operating area itself was sunk into the ground, a good level below while these carrion crows watched, waiting for him to be dissected.

“Ah, the patient seems to be awake, at long last.”

Abraham. Vlad’s lips pulled back in a useless, soundless snarl that the Dutchman paid no mind to. He smiled coldly at the vampire before regarding his audience once more. “Lady,” he nodded towards a particular place in the stands, Vlad following in bemusement, “and gentlemen, my esteemed audience. Today, we are going to tap into an unprecedented wellspring of knowledge. Granted, it will be no…walk in the park, as the Americans say.” A polite ring of laughter. “Father Augustus, if you would be so kind as to command our patient to fall into an unconscious state, then we might begin.”

The man in question he remembered from before looked particularly indignant at the suggestion. “And why should it be? That _creature_ nearly befouled Europe with its plague, and now we are to afford it humanity?! Professor Van Helsing, if another surgeon would be more suitable—”

“I am a doctor, not a torturer, _sir_!” Abraham thundered uproariously, fixing the man with a hard stare. However, he tamed his voice back into something decent. “At the very least, given the nature of one of our audience members, such a scene would not be suitable for a lady.”

Vlad felt as though the wind was kicked from his lungs the moment he found whoever this ‘lady’ was. How long had it been? In a mind that let slip the faces he’d seen through the centuries more often then he wished would happen, hers surged forth. The same face of that Nubian princess he’d met ages ago in Edirne who was supposed to have been married off. Except, she was here, there was no mistaking it.

Her midnight umber face was drawn in an enigmatic but faintly worried expression, for she’d always been a peerlessly composed woman. Hands seated on her lap, she bore a place of distinction to be there. And that habit—Coptic Christian, by the looks of it. This was no doppelganger, he knew. Amani was the genuine article, a ghost of the past. Except, she was more than a ghost. So, so much more.

It was always electric when seeing the love of your life from the human past.

“It goes without saying that our patient is a portent of the future, of unprecedented potential for the whole of mankind and what we might unlock in him. One I intend to make generous use of, gentlemen.”

He wanted to rail against the bindings that arrested him to the operating table, tear free and abscond somewhere safe with her. The Nubian princess he had once sworn to marry and make happy from the oppression of the Ottomans. But, he knew his window of opportunity was limited before they would render him unconscious and begin pulling him apart like a frog.

“Amani, _dragostea mea_ —!"

“Father, put him under, now!” Abraham barked immediately after his outburst, the vampire writhing in the binds in some futile attempt to escape while Amani watched on, horrified, motionless. Vlad uttered a broken growl and unintelligible gasp of her name before the corners of his world faded to black, the thrashing ceasing as he fell into an abyss so deep there couldn’t be any way of crawling back out unless they let him.

“ _Amani…_ ” was the last word on his lips before it died off altogether.


	4. Chapter 4

Warning(s): M, abuse mention

* * *

He didn’t know how many hours had passed since the time he’d gone unconscious in that operating theater, and now. What Vlad did know was it was the same, dusty cell he’d been originally locked within, somewhere beneath the Vatican. His fingers curled, raking rows into the dirt, eyes opening to a blank, domed ceiling high up as two men standing upon each other’s shoulders. Torchlight flickered, an archaic, old sound from his past. Distantly, the vampire wondered if he hadn’t been transported back in time, that he wasn’t in some Edirne cell waiting for…something. His friend, Mehmed? A musty cough of a laugh barked at that.

Vlad sat up, a laboriously sore effort. Groaning softly, he managed to at least sit up enough that he wasn’t rendered prone, but his mind numbed through the haze of pain. Clutching his skull, a distant, shrill tone overtook his senses until they whited out into some meandering blankness, the universe in and through reality. The one where he was behind steel bars and an iron front of cold.

When the vampire finally came to, when he could see the dust and hear the flickering torchlight, it was only then that he realized there was someone obscuring his view.

Whether this was a sight to rejoice or despair, he couldn’t say.

Amani looked more beautiful than he could’ve remembered. Tall and strong even in a nun’s constraining habit, those bright brown eyes were muted of the joy he remembered; wide, expressive mouth pursed shut despite how much emotion she was suppressing, as if it were herculean. A year older than him when they first met, a woman of her late 20’s, she embodied immortality better than he ever could. At one with the sands of time and the brightness of the sun.

“How?” It’s uttered as a dim murmur, not quite able to summon disbelief. Defeat. Exhaustion. “ _Dragostea mea_ —”

“Don’t call me that!”

It echoed like a gunshot, that. Vlad visibly flinched even as he slowly gathered his knees beneath him, motioning to stand, but too weak to. He gazed at her through the sloppy fall of his black bangs, features drawn tiredly but imploring. His chest ached so much it felt as though his chest would burst. “Amani, I—how? How are you here?”

Her arms folded and she looked away, ready to succumb into tears. There was a burning want to hold her despite its improbability. “The same as you, I suppose. When I left Edirne, left on the sea so many years after, I was changed. But, it’s easier to say you’re dead. In a way, it’s true.” Her eyelids fluttered closed and she brought a hand to wipe the corners of her eyes. Then, back upon him where his heart clenched. “I wish you were dead. I wish the memory of the sweet man I knew had died with you.”

His brows furrowed together. “Do you speak of my cruelties? What I had to do to survive?” he fumed hotly, tiredly, despite the growing passion. But as quickly as it flared, it snuffed out. “I was ready to give you the world. My love, my heart, my princedom—everything. Why didn’t you think to even find me, if you lived?”

“Because my world doesn’t revolve around you, Vlad!” she snapped back, broad nostrils flaring as she inhaled harshly. “I was a princess once, too! I had, and have, people I love and wanted to protect! I returned to what was left of them both and I did just that! But, you, you—the things I heard! From the Saxons, the Russians, and even the West! The things you did, the unspeakable horror! Did you truly believe I could possibly abandon my people and give my heart away to a monster?!”

Vlad stood up, wincing from the pain, taking a stride close until he almost pressed into the iron bars. Until their grille pressured into his abused flesh. “I loved you, Amani.” His fingers curled the grating, forehead pressed into it almost in supplication. “I still do. Nothing can change that. But, the boy you knew is no more. He died to make way for the man who did what had to be done.”

“Did what had to be done?! Vlad, you killed countless people, not just your enemies! You killed with such depravity that the Conqueror himself had to turn away in horror at what you’d done! And to think, you never stopped. You kept killing and killing until you sought to damn whole nations with you, like you did to England. Didn’t you?!”

His eyes sank closed, knowing she was right. Every death had been his. Men, women, and children, all lost to the ravages of war, rich and poor alike. To him, there was only those who were loyal, and those who were not. Had been. Now, he had no nation, no Brides, no family to call his so long as he was the villain of this tale.

“I miss how we were,” Amani continued, head bowed, expression pained. Torchlight enunciated this and he thought he saw a tear roll down her onyx-toned cheek, cool and shining like a diamond. “When you used to tell me stories of your boyhood spent as a page in Byzantium, in Constantinople, where the emperors, the brothers, treated you like their own son. Do you remember how tender you looked? How you loved them more than your own father?” She smiled wryly, faraway, despite the tears and sniffling.

Vlad swallowed thickly, feeling a lump wallow in his throat. “I remember,” he murmured hoarsely, the pain fresh from that day and night of conquest stinging him with barbs and dull aches. “Or how we wanted to sojourn to Egypt together and explore the great pyramids, the Valley of Kings. And how I begged to see your great kingdom for myself. How we wanted to see so much of the ancient world together. —We really were a bookish pair, weren’t we?” He smiled, wan and distant.

“I wish we could go back to that. I truly do,” Amani said, but her hands clenched at her sides. She’d stopped shedding tears. “But, we can’t. As long as you live now, I don’t know if I can trust you. I may not ever, again. Vlad, do you understand what I’m saying? Even… Elizabeta died for you!”

Tears of his own, bloody and broken, sprang to his eyes. “Elizabeta? Amani, what do you mean? What do you mean she died for me? She pitched herself from the ramparts at Castle Dracula when Radu and his armies had approached, how could she have died again?”

Amani shook her head, folding her arms again, unable to look at him. “She didn’t die on that day, Vlad. She almost did, but she didn’t. She was found, and she was turned.” Those fathomless brown eyes flickered on him. “Just as I had been transformed.”

Slowly did Vlad sink to his knees, shoulders shaking. His hand lingered behind, gripping the bar loosely and uselessly, head bowed. “What do you mean? I—what happened, really?”

“She was captured, Vlad. Just as I’d been. Except, I escaped. Whoever turned us had a vendetta against you. They wanted to hurt you through us. Elizabeta was almost made a puppet, but she fought back. She shapeshifted into you to confuse the Band of Heroes, and it was her who had Morris’ Bowie knife and Harker’s kukri knife plunged into her heart. …She was my friend. She helped me escape.”

That hand on the bars came to cover his face, weeping strained and quiet. “…She died. Again. And it’s all because of me!”

Amani’s tears came again, a sympathetic grief she shared. “Because of her, I was able to return home. Do you know what I did, Vlad? I did the exact opposite of everything you did. While you killed, and maimed, and sent war to every corner of your country, I freed innocent people meant to be taken overseas as slaves. I healed the innocent, I brought them back to Africa’s shores where they could live free. Except where I changed those dedicated to me, I have never taken a human life despite our nature. Because of her, I refuse to live in the grief of your shadow. Even if there was a love once.” She sighed sadly, looking away. “Even if it is still there.”

Grief. Grief might be all he knew now, but what was immutable was the fact that he couldn’t hate Amani or her words. That what she felt was indeed what many would if they came to him face to face knowing his treachery and tyranny, justified compared to the man he’d been. And most of all, how could he forgive her when she’d wronged him in no way? She had befriended his wife when she’d lived a life of such extreme loneliness. Especially when he couldn’t be the husband she deserved.

“What will you do? Where will you go?” he asked after a long silence, voice a ghastly hoarse. The torchlight spoke over him he was so dull, so blunted.

Amani wiped away her tears, spine straightening. “I do not know. I came here to see to it that you were put away, as I’d heard. That whatever became of you, the world would not be subjected to it. Not anymore.” She quieted, shifted restlessly. “I believe I will go to America, and I will save those like me who do not have humanity in the eyes of tyrants. I will make true peace in the world, wherever I go. That is what I shall do.”

Vlad nodded, a slow, drunken bob of his head. She felt sorry for him, wanted told him, but she couldn’t. Not when blood stained far more than just his hands and she was tired of so much red. Her heart was girlish and errant even after all these centuries, but Amani wouldn’t stifle it. Not when he’d been her first love, and she, his.

“I see,” Vlad murmured with a delirious smile, voice like a draft breezing through cobwebs. “Godspeed, Amani. Godspeed.” He chuckled, mirthless and utterly disowned.

“If we meet again in this life, Vlad, pray that you are changed. Pray that you have atoned.” With that, she turned on her heel and he watched her retreat like the most beautiful vision he’d ever seen, clinging to the echo of her footfalls, the shadow that played upon the corridor walls in the torchlight. He clung to it until she was a distant echo in his own mind.

Then, he curled into himself and wept.

 


End file.
